I’m sure you’ve been there, I have.
You decided this time is it. You know what you have to d0 – diet and exercise, and you get started. You’ve got all the reasons to do it – increase your healthspan, reverse diabetes, reduce pain etc. But 2, 5, 10, 30 days into your plan, you stop, in some way or another. But why?
There are many reasons this may be the case, including minimal progress, laziness (more on this later), planning etc, but today I will comment on a lesser-known reason, competing motivations.
This is probably the most common cause of ‘failure to follow through’.
What do we mean by competing motivations?
Well simply, we have our conscious motivations which tend to be positive in nature. ie. they will lead to positive results. Examples include knowing it will be better for your health, or being around for your kids.
But there are thoughts, often subconscious that contradict and over rule that motivation to lose weight. Discovering them, acknowledging, and challenging them is the way to get to success. You need to dismantle those reasons, those conflicting motivations that sit in the subconscious.
So, how do I do that?
When you find yourself rejecting your plan for exercise or nutrition, this is when you need to stop and reflect on what is going on win your mind. Is there an emotion, a sensation, that may point you toward ‘why’? What happened that day that may affect how you feel about your plan.
Are you motivated by comfort – stressed and falling into old coping habits
Are you motivated by fear – What happens if I lose weight
Are you motivated by self-doubt – I’m likely to fail anyway?
Are you motivated by your support system – If I lose weight and no one else does, will it upset the apple cart?
There are many more examples, and they will be specific to you. On some level you are probably aware of many of them. Bring them to the surface so you can tell them either calmly (or not) that they don’t win the motivation contest. That spot is reserved for all the positive outcomes of losing weight.
But, you cant just ignore these emotions and backstory, you need to talk to them, feel them, or eslse they will continue to challenge you and sometimes they may win.
This moment in time is the present, and many of our negative motivations exist in the past. They exist for many reasons, but are often irrelevant to the present. So send them back to the past, and if required bring them to the present in order to deal with and dismantle them. They do not serve you now.
